The secret food diary of a person diagnosed with schizophrenia

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  We wanted to find out whether looking at the food diaries filled in by people with schizophrenia would help us find out when they eat, what they eat and why they eat those foods. We looked at the food diaries filled in by eight people with schizophrenia during 1 week.
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  All the people managed to fill in their diaries. The food diaries showed that most of the people:

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    did not eat a lot fruit and vegetables;
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    ate a lot of the same foods;
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    ate a lot of convenience food and ready meals;
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    had an organized mealtime routine;
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    did not drink enough liquid;
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    did not eat many cakes or sweets;
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    drank no or very little alcohol;
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    thought the food they ate was healthy when often it was not.
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  The people with schizophrenia in our study do not have a very healthy diet. This could be because they:

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    cannot afford fruit and vegetables;
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    are not good at cooking;
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    do not feel like cooking;
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    are not sure what food is healthy.
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  The people with schizophrenia all managed to fill in their diaries. This shows that:

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    they may want to get healthier;
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    filling in food diaries with the help of a nurse may assist people with schizophrenia eat healthier food.

The objective was to consider the feasibility of food diaries as a method of understanding the dietary behaviour of people with schizophrenia. Examination of the food diaries completed in 1 week by eight patients with schizophrenia. All the patients were successful in completing the task. Examination of the food diaries revealed that: eating fruit and vegetables was largely absent; there was very little variety in most of the patients’ diets; patients relied heavily on convenience food and ready meals for their main meal; as a rule patients followed an ordered mealtime routine; generally patients did not drink enough fluid; they were not big treat eaters; only one patient recorded drinking any alcohol; overall there appeared to be poor diet literacy in our small sample. The results show that on the whole, people with schizophrenia have a poor diet. This could be due to a combination of financial difficulty, lack of skills in food preparation, lack of motivation to prepare food or ignorance of what constitutes a healthy diet. The fact that they all managed to complete the task is perhaps evidence of motivation to improve their health and demonstrates the utility of food diaries in educating this population.